Frequently Asked Questions

Saikat Chakrabarti is a Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress in California's 11th District, which covers most of San Francisco. Born in Fort Worth, Texas, to immigrants from India, he moved to San Francisco at 23, started his own company, and later became the second engineer at Stripe. He left tech to serve as Director of Organizing Technology on Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign, then co-founded Justice Democrats and served as the first Chief of Staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, where he launched the Green New Deal. He currently runs New Consensus, a policy think tank developing the Mission for America — a successor framework to the Green New Deal.

The American Dream is failing and authoritarianism is winning — and those two things are connected. The cost-of-living crisis is fundamentally why Trump is in the White House, and if living standards don't start going up again, we'll keep seeing authoritarians rise. Yet the Democratic Party keeps responding the same way it always has. Saikat is running because fixing this means making the impossible possible — and that's what he's spent his career doing, from electing the Squad to launching the Green New Deal. He's running to stand up to Trump's attacks on San Francisco and our democracy, and to finally deliver affordable housing, Medicare for All, and public power — without corporate donors in the way.

The other candidates won't criticize their own party's leadership, even when those leaders are the reason nothing gets done on issues like housing or healthcare. Saikat will. He's the only candidate in the field willing to call out Democrats by name when they put donors ahead of constituents — and the only one refusing corporate PAC and federal lobbyist money to keep that pressure honest. Business as usual won't solve the problems facing working people — we need a representative in Washington who will stand up to the status quo and fight for real change.

Saikat managed AOC's 2018 primary campaign, the upset that defeated then-Caucus Chair Joe Crowley. He then served as her first Chief of Staff in Congress, where he led the launch of the Green New Deal. In 2019, after planning his transition and onboarding a successor, he left D.C. to return to San Francisco — to start a climate policy think tank and raise his daughter.

He launched the Green New Deal and ran the organizing strategy behind it — pairing outside pressure from groups like the Sunrise Movement with inside whipping of votes. That campaign reshaped the 2020 presidential field's climate platforms and laid the groundwork for the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest climate and union-jobs investment in U.S. history. He also helped recruit and elect a generation of progressives through Justice Democrats, including Ayanna Pressley, Cori Bush, and Jamaal Bowman.

Because the crises facing us — climate change, the cost of living crisis, the threat of AI job displacement, rising authoritarianism — are too big to be solved by incremental policies and reforms. Saikat believes you have to meet problems at the scale they actually exist. Running on smaller, "realistic" ideas is what got Democrats to a position where they're losing voters and the underlying problems for working people only get worse. The path forward is to fight for solutions that match the size of the problem, then organize the political power to win them.

Saikat is honest that with Trump in the White House, the first term is about building power and protecting San Francisco from Trump's attacks, not passing the whole platform. Saikat is working with a dozen or so insurgent candidates likely to win alongside him to organize a caucus that withholds its votes during budget and debt-ceiling fights to force restorations of ACA, Medicaid, SNAP, and clawbacks of ICE funding, and uses discharge petitions to force floor votes on broadly popular reforms Democratic leadership won't bring up — like banning congressional stock trading. The goal is to win some fights, build political capital, and set up 2028 as the real change election.

No. The campaign rejects contributions from corporate PACs and lobbyists. Saikat has spent his career arguing that corporate money is the mechanism by which big donor interests override what voters actually want from Congress — taking it would make the rest of his platform impossible to defend.

Following the 2020 redistricting, California's 11th Congressional District now covers the area formerly represented as the 12th District. CA-11 encompasses nearly all of San Francisco, excluding the neighborhoods of Crocker-Amazon, Excelsior, Little Hollywood, Mission Terrace, Oceanview, Outer Mission, Portola, and Visitacion Valley. You can check whether your address is in CA-11 in about 30 seconds.

No. Nancy Pelosi announced in November 2025 that she will not seek re-election in 2026, making 2026 the first open race for this seat since 1987.

CA-11 is an open seat for 2026 and has drawn a competitive Democratic primary field that includes state Sen. Scott Wiener, SF Supervisor Connie Chan, and others. The race has drawn national attention as one of the highest-profile open Democratic seats of 2026.

You can sign up to volunteer for canvassing, phone banking, postcarding, and other field activities. The campaign also has community events listed on the events page. No experience required.

The campaign has two offices in San Francisco: one at 800 Irving Street in the Inner Sunset, and one at 582 Castro Street in the Castro. Stop by either during open hours for volunteer shifts, lit pickups, or just to say hi.

A super PAC funded by tech billionaires has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on misleading attack mailers against Saikat. The mailers recycle two main lines of attack: one falsely claiming Saikat is "from Maryland" (he moved to San Francisco in 2009, and bought the Maryland house for his parents), and one resurrecting a 2019 FEC complaint filed by a far-right group that the FEC investigated and dismissed, voting 5-1 to close the file in February 2022.

The primary election is Tuesday, June 2, 2026. Voter registration closes May 18, 2026. Mail ballots are sent to every registered California voter and typically arrive in early May.

You can check your registration at saikat.us/am-i-registered. If you've moved within San Francisco, changed your name, or aren't sure, it takes about 30 seconds to verify.

You can register online through the California Secretary of State. You need to be a U.S. citizen, a California resident, and at least 18 by election day. Same-day registration is available at any vote center during early voting and on election day, but you'll cast a provisional ballot.

Yes. California automatically sends a mail ballot to every registered voter. You can return it by mail, drop it in any official ballot drop box, or hand it in at a vote center. Mail ballots must be postmarked by election day and received within 7 days.

San Francisco operates vote centers (not traditional precinct polling places). Any registered SF voter can vote at any SF vote center during early voting or on election day. Find the nearest one at sfelections.org.

Yes — in California's top-two primary, you vote for one candidate per office regardless of party affiliation. The two candidates with the most votes advance to the November general election.